First picture: Suppose that at some learned gathering in this country, one of the company were suddenly and inexplicably to disappear, and that at the same moment, an exact replica of him were suddenly and inexplicably to appear at some comparable meeting in Australia. The person who appears in Australia is exactly similar, as to both bodily and metal characteristics, with the person who disappears in America. There is continuity of memory, complete similarity of bodily features, including even fingerprints, hair and eye coloration, and stomach contents, and also of beliefs, habits, and mental propensities. In fact there is everything that would lead us to identify the one who appeared with the one who disappeared, except continuity of occupancy of space....
Second picture: Now let us suppose that the event in America is not a sudden and inexplicable disappearance, and indeed not a disappearance at all, but a sudden death. Only, at the moment when the individual dies, a replica of him as he was at the moment before his death, complete with memory up to that instant, appears in Australia....
Third picture: My third supposal is that the replica, complete with memory, etc. appears, not in Australia, but as a resurrection replica in a different world altogether, a resurrection world inhabited by resurrected persons. This world occupies its own space, distinct from the space with which we are now familiar....
Can we not imagine this?
This thought experiment is presented in the context of a discussion about whether or not the existence of the Christian god is, in principle, verifiable. That is to say, can we at least imagine some experience that would prove that such a god exists? "Life after death" - that is, "continued conscious existence after bodily death" (16) - is such an experience, claims Hick. However, others claim that such a concept of immortality is unintelligible: the self cannot exist without the physical body. Hick's thought experiment is designed to show that the idea of life after death is intelligible, that we can imagine, without contradiction, continued conscious existence after bodily death. (And so the existence of the Christian god is thus, in principle, verifiable).
But, one might ask, considering the third picture, how will the person know he has really died? Maybe he just fell asleep and then woke up - so it's not life after death after all. Hick adds to his picture the possibility that the person will meet in the resurrection world people he knows to have died.
Even with that addition, does Hick's experiment demonstrate what he thinks it demonstrates? Perhaps immortality is intelligible, and perhaps such immortality is in accord with the concept of the Christian god. But is it in accord only with a Christian god? Perhaps life after death verifies some other god or just that death as we know it isn't the end many of us think it is. To this, Hick merely adds another possibility to his picture, the possibility that the person will in some way meet with the Christian god in the resurrection world.
Sources:
John Hick. "Theology and Verification." Theology Today 17.1 (1960): 12-31. 22, 23.
Peg Tittle. What If... Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy. Part 1, Metaphysics: Philosophy of Religion. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 38-39.
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